Tveir
by Helen Racine
Summary: Adoption, fate, and family. Drabble-ish.


**Start/End Date: **Tuesday, June 12th, 2012**  
**

**Rating:** T, for a bit of cussing and mature themes

**Disclaimer:** Not mine! Not making any money!

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_******Tveir**_

Frigga was not for the wild - and the mountains, _Ofolr_, had a well-earned reputation for being treacherous and cruel.

Barely-visible from the palace, yet menacing and looming like a secret in the back of one's mind. Jagged, cold, and untamed. A place where few people - indeed, only the bravest warriors - dared visit. So different from the city, with its soaring towers, blazing hearths, and manicured gardens -

_Ofolr_, so it was said, could reveal the inner essence of every man. Their feared selves. The gross, distorted, raw potential that lurked under golden skin.

It had been many weeks since Frigga had contact with the outside world.

The unbearable weight; the solitude; the silence. And, though she understood Odin's reasoning, she still hated him for this cruelest form of love. Smuggling her from the palace in the dead of night, with only a trusted handmaid, a huntsman, and two guards for company. The command had been clear -

"Into the mountains."

Nobody was to know their location. Asgard was not easily defeated: its hot-blooded warriors and brilliant tacticians were infamous across the nine realms. But, the Frost Giants had already infiltrated their borders a half-dozen times - caught and killed before they could wreck substantial damage.

However impossible: if Odin was to fall, the princes must survive. Must live. Must revenge their people's fate.

It was a six-day ride to the foothills. She sat on the horse, shocked and silent, one arm wrapped around her engorged stomach, whispering lullabyes to her sons. Fields fading into forest, the villages becoming smaller and less-frequent. They found a hunting cabin in the foothills: far enough into the wild to be hidden, but not so deep asto anger the beasts and malicious spirits. And, they waited -

The future was mist: spinning and churning, formless and mystical. Few could make sense of its half-whispered secrets. Clarity had come in an instant, when she first felt a flicker inside her womb: two sons. The sun and moon. Men who would do great things -

They waited -

Every week the huntsman would venture to the village, trading game and skins for flour, eggs, milk, and much-anticipated news. The war, which had started in Milgard, progressed to other places. Other times. The freeze threatening to overtake everything.

Damn the Giants. Not a century ago, Laufey had dined at Odin's table, celebrating peace. Skaði. the Queen, had been housed in Frigga's personal guest chambers: hardly larger than an Asgardian, skin the pale blue of moonlight, and eyes a startling sapphire. She possessed all the beauty and grace of fresh snow.

They waited -

After fifteen weeks, the babies signaled their impending arrival with a series of violent kicks. Thirty-six hours later, exhausted, her handmaid announced: "A boy - "

The baby, screamining in protest -

"The other?"

"There is no other, m'lady - "

She hardly felt the after-birth: arms wrapped around the child, eyes canvassing his already-golden skin. The spark of magic in him: wild, like the storm. Like the mountain. Odin's son, in every possible way.

She mourned his brother -

It was a full two weeks before the war ended. Four days until Odin met them on the road, horse nearing death. Unaccompanied, his gouged eye untended, still wearing battle-stained armour. There had been no pause at the palace for food or sleep, and only a momentary break along the way to care for the small, carefully-swaddled bundle in his arms.

The whisp of black hair echoed like a long-forgotten dream -

"Where?" she was at Odin's side in an instant, reaching up for the infant. Hardly three weeks old, lips twisting up into a toothless smile when he saw her face. "Where did you find him?"

"Abandoned in a temple - "

"This is my son."

"This is Laufey's son - " his voice was harsh, but eyes soft. "He bears the mark of a prince."

"No." She was absolutely certain, tears falling down her face. "I saw two - I _felt _two inside of me - but bore only one. This is the other. _He_ is our missing half: I can feel his spark! He is _ours!_"

"Our son?" He was King. He could never admit to the _joy_ that filled his body when he found the child. How it pained his heart every time it cried. "Perhaps, then, it was fate that brought me to him."

The wild wonder as the infant's blue skin faded to peach, as if - for all of its short life - it had been _waiting _for Odin's arrival.

"A parent knows their child." Frigga would know better than most. Her magic had been woven with the very essence of life: motherhood. "Would you meet your eldest son?"

The handmaid rushed forwards, arms outstretched, offering up the sun child. Odin took the parcel gingerly, balancing the newborn on two trembling hands. "What do we call him?"

"Thor - with all the strength of the mountain on which he was born," she said. "And Loki - who somehow escaped and was born of another."

The journey to the Palace lasted eight days: three spent at the village of Hroth, in the care of healers as messangers were sent onward. Their eventual arrival was greeted with flowers, banners, and filled streets -

Triumphant King. Mother Queen.

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Factoid of the day - "tveir" is Old Norse for "two".


End file.
